đź“·: Acting Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy Michael Kelleher visited the office of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) for a meeting on Friday, October 17.
By Diego Morra
While the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) has persistently opposed opening its hearings to the Filipino people, it welcomed with open arms US Embassy Acting Deputy Chief Michael Kelleher, and the ICI, true to its obsession with opaqueness, kept the media out of the in camera meeting, the embassy kept mum and all that the commission’s spokesman could say was that the ICI explained its mandate to Kelleher.
This, indeed, is strange since a foreign legate expresses keen interest on the country’s internal affairs, and the ICI’s top guns had to enlighten the Trump administration about what the panel’s mandate is. Nothing has been said about the embassy’s cooperation into the investigation, which could be done under existing protocols for collaboration in case the commission has already established the paper trail on how the people’s money was wired to the US to buy mansions, business jets and properties. The use of stolen money to buy US assets violates federal law, in which case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may step in.
Apparently, ICI executive director Brian Keith Hosaka did not see anything irregular about the closed door meeting with Kelleher as he disclosed the parley allowed the diplomat to discuss the inner workings of the fact-finding body charged with finding out who were responsible for graft, the slicing of the budget “without” the knowledge of the Commission on Audit (COA) and the top officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) that handled the funds and divided the loot among congressmen, senators and the contractors after subtracting the money for soil tests, evaluation of materials and the standard payment of value added tax, all of which comprise merely 9% of the total budget for each flood control project (FCP.)
All told, 91% of the appropriations for the FCPs from the national budget or the proceeds of foreign loans comprise the money that is ripe for the picking by grafters. “As one of the countries of great interest in the Philippines, the US was very much interested in what the ICI would do to address the problem of the flood control projects and other anomalous infrastructure projects,” Hosaka said. He did not say that the pork barrel was a US invention that entered the Philippine body politic in 1920 through officials supervising the Philippine Assembly. Or that the Teapot Dome scandal hatched by US Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall became the template for Philippine graft. Fall leased US Navy petroleum reserves in California and Wyoming to private oil companies owned by robber barons without bidding.
Fall was paid only $400,000 for his service, an amount that is a pittance compared to the billions of pesos skimmed by FCP conspirators. With that small amount, Fall was ridiculed by wags, who said that he gave a bad name for corruption in Washington DC. For this scandal, the presidency of Warren Harding was tagged as one of the worst in US history, rivaling that of Donald Trump and James Buchanan, as well as the sex scandal involving Grover Cleveland. In the case of ICI and Hosaka, what is scandalous is the fact that the ICI accommodated Kelleher, with Hosaka saying that “basically, he wanted to know what we have done, what we will be doing, and what we expect from the ICI.”
The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) tagged the closed-door meeting between ICI and Kelleher as “another blow to the commission’s credibility and a direct affront to the country’s sovereignty.” The news struck a raw nerve among KMP’s constituency which has been denied the chance to know the inner workings of the ICI inasmuch as the commission wanted to keep all documents, disclosures and the testimonies of witnesses and even those of possible criminal respondents sub rosa. Ostensibly, the ICI thought it was proper to keep the lid on the panel’s proceedings to safeguard the rights of the people it has summoned vis-à -vis the duty of the panel to be transparent and answerable to the people at large, the citizens that paid dearly for the plunder of a chosen few. The Makabayan Bloc, Pamalakaya, Anakbayan and former Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casino also denounced the surreptitious undiplomatic Kelleher visit.
“Habang itinatago ng ICI sa taumbayan ang kanilang mga hearing, isang dayuhang opisyal ng Estados Unidos ang nakipag-usap sa ICI. Nakakainsulto at nakakagalit ito,” KMP chairman emeritus Danilo Ramos protested. Worse, the peasant leader argued, the meeting “reveals the ICI’s tainted independence and questionable integrity.” Without transparency and the willingness to let the people know directly that the ICI is doing to ferret out the truth on the FCP scandal, the commission risks being condemned as a tool for whitewashing and shielding Marcos Jr., whose signature of the annual appropriations bills allowed the graft-ridden FCPs to be implemented, to the detriment of taxpayers.
“While the US is given the heads up over our internal affairs, Filipinos are deliberately kept in the dark,” KMP added. “This reeks of foreign interference and undermines the pompous claim that the ICI is acting in the people’s interest.” The group theorized that the Trump government may yet craft a plan to quell the growing mass protests in Manila and major provinces against corruption, saying Washington is working to shield President Marcos Jr. and his allies from accountability amid the unprecedented and historic levels of corruption and pork barrel allocations embedded in the national budget’s P263-billion unprogrammed funds. KMP asked the public to take part in the October 21 “Baha sa Liwasang Bonifacio” broad anti-corruption protests, a nationwide day of action led by farmers to seek accountability in the corruption scandals and demand an end to the oppression of Filipino peasants and rural masses. “Kagyat na panawagan sa Oktubre 21 ang pag-alis sa Hari at Reyna ng mga kurakot — sina Marcos Jr at Sara Duterte mismo,” Ramos concluded.
